As promised *here*, here is the comparison between running a desktop and a raspberry pi. My raspberry pi setup is as such:

2x raspberry pi’s

2x external usb hard drives – one ssd, one sata

1x 8 port 3.0 usb hub

Network hub is not measured in this test… Here are the results for the pi’s:

Time measured: 236 hours

Total KWH consumed: 2.34

Amp draw (constant): 0.14

Volts (constant): 120.1

Watts (constant): 10

Compared to the desktop:

Time measured: 143 hours

Total KWH consumed: 12.34 KWH

Amp draw (constant): 0.78

Volts (constant): 118.5

Watts (constant): 88

If, and it’s a big if, if the raspberry pi had an ARM v7 processor instead of the v6 then it could truly replace a desktop since then it would be able to run flash (no flash available for the v6 ARM processor unfortunately). But, as we move more and more to HTML 5 then this dependency will be less and less. As you can see, it is far more economical to run a raspberry pi – at least for the non-gamer 😉